Energetics of 2D colloids in free-standing smectic-C films

Abstract

The formation of regular colloid patterns in free-standing smectic films at the transition from the smectic-C to the isotropic or nematic phase is well known experimentally. The self-organization of isotropic or nematic droplets is caused by their mutual interaction, mediated by elastic distortions of the local director in the surrounding liquid crystal. These distortions are related to the anchoring conditions of the director at the droplet border. We describe analytically the energetics of the liquid crystal environment of a single droplet in one-constant approximation. A method of complex analysis, Conformal Mapping, is employed. Following a suggestion of Dolganov et al. (Phys. Rev. E. 73, 041706 (2006)), energetics of chain and grid patterns built from the colloids are investigated numerically in order to explain experimentally observed formations and their director fields.

Nanoparticle Aggregation and Fractal Growth in Fluid Smectic Membranes

“…Recent experiments have verified these model predictions for the hydrodynamic behavior of micron-size inclusions in fluid smectic films [21][22][23]. There have been several reports on the self-organization of droplets and islands in smectic films [28][29][30] but there are few studies of the diffusion and aggregation of nanoparticles in these systems. In this paper, we describe the slow, diffusion-limited aggregation of buckyball clusters dispersed in 2D smectic membranes into macroscopic fractal clusters.…”

Colloidal particles in liquid crystal films and at interfaces

“…This term allows for a spontaneous bend deformation of the c-director and favors the dipolar defect configuration with two −1/2 surface defects placed at one side of the inclusion. Without this term, the quadrupolar configuration of the c-director with two antipodal surface defects of strength of −1/2 was found to be energetically more stable [ 99,93,100].…”

Defect-mediated emulsification in two dimensions

“…Typical strategies include surfactant or grafted polymer stabilization and could involve Coulombic or steric repulsion of dispersed droplets [5,6]. Recently there has been substantial interest in topological stabilization, which may arise when droplets of disordered liquid are introduced in an anisotropic host fluid [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25].…”